Nothing Like A Good Extraction
by smokingace
Summary: Kanda is on a mission to solve his alleged vampirism. High School AU series.


**Title: **Nothing Like A Good Extraction

**Pairing: **Kanda/Lavi, Lenalee/Allen, Marian/Maria, etc

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al

**A/N:** Semi-epic High School AU; the one where Lavi may be the culprit and Kanda must solve the case! Ahem.

&

It all started with a hickey.

"It's a purple welt," Lenalee had gasped. "Aw, did those thugs hurt you again? Where are they, I'll show them what it's like to hurt down there."

"You're a girl," Kanda had pointed out.

"Exactly!"

"It's the mark of the gods," the Mikk had said in the student lounge. What he had been doing there, Kanda was not about to find out. "They have dubbed you their earthly queen."

"Oh piss off," Kanda had pointed out.

"We shall meet again, Kanda Yuu."

"It's the kiss of the mythical vampire!" Walker had screamed. "Don't you worry, Kanda, I have garlic at my house."

"And what good would that do?" Kanda had pointed out.

"Obviously _I_ won't get bitten."

You may have noticed that Kanda doesn't necessarily _know_ how he gets anything done around here with them jabbering on about mythical creatures and all that crap.

Lavi had had his two pence as well: "You should tell Allen that the modern vampire would hardly be dissuaded by a mere necklace of bulbous _herbs_."

"_Dissuaded_, Lavi?" Kanda had said.

"A' right, it'd be rude to 'em, but they'd still go for a bite."

"Are you also going to tell me that the modern vampire does not have red hair?"

"Are you implying that _I_ did that?"

"The only person to ever _suck_ on my neck was _you_."

"W-was?"

"Yes. You have officially stopped."

"Yuu. Yuuuuu. Kanda? Dun barge out like - "

And Kanda had barged out of Lavi's bedroom, turning his nose up at the kitten in the foyer.

*

Since it all started with a hickey, it must, with good reason, end with _no_ hickey.

Kanda has spent a week and a half out of Lavi's room so far, and so far, he is having what he would call, according to common sense, of course, _withdrawals_. But he can't, according to common sense, talk about that. Fuck no.

"Maybe you're turning into a vampire," Lenalee says at lunch in their newly constructed dining hall. The walls aren't so charred anymore from the fire (which is another case that has yet to be fully uncovered, though Kanda is now sure that Lenalee - ).

"Have you been discussing this with Walker."

"He is _our_ friend, Kanda," she says amicably, scooting closer to him on the bench. He leans away from her, watching his soup grow cold. Sigh. Maybe he should check her into rehab.

"Blimey, Kanda, you've got the pick of the litter, eh?" a kid from a few of Kanda's advanced classes says in passing.

Lenalee gasps to herself and asks who he might be. Kanda stirs his soup. "A vampire of the lowest kind," he muses. He makes a mental note to kill it later.

"I'm so jealous, you get to eat lunch together, too?" a very unhelpful voice comes peeling out, and Kanda arches his back, afraid to look up.

"Ditching class, Walker?" Kanda says.

"_Skipping_ class, for your information."

"Honey, please don't skip class on our account," Lenalee says.

"Actually, T-Tyki Mikk is substituting for that one."

Lenalee and Kanda glance at each other.

"Don't tell me you believe he's a vampire amongst us humans now," Lenalee says, amused.

And Kanda. Is _not_. "Skip your ass out of here, Walker. The Mikk is missing you."

Walker is somehow able to steal Kanda's spoon and drop it on the floor.

Kanda debates sticking it up his ass in such a high traffic area. Would such a brazen act of hatred jeopardize his reputation. . .? Kanda quickly surveys the room.

Lenalee ignores this minor advent. "We were just discussing Kanda's, um, hickey."

Walker gets very giddy. "I want to see it again!"

And this is why Kanda wears his hair down.

"It's all right, Kanda, Lenalee tells me everything. She told me about the time you busted up those nasty blokes 'cause they were – "

"Oh no! Would you look at the time? I must hurry to class. I need to write that thesis. That thesis about how insurgent groups keep their collective mouths shut. If you know what's good for you, Allen _Walker_, please join me."

Kanda stares at her scurrying backside as she departs. After a century of doing that, he turns to Walker and absolutely glowers the best forbidding glower he's managed in quite a while. "Nice hair, Walker. Did someone urinate on your head in the locker room?"

"No? Why?" _Because your hair could be described as a putrid yellow, you idiot._

Kanda need not act like it's the most obvious thing in his universe. Walker then makes a face, successfully threatened.

Good. One down for the day, nine more to reach his daily quota for how many people he can truly disturb.

*

But Kanda only manages three. He walks to his car, defeated in spirit, rubbing at the sore spot on his neck. How odd that the color's gone away, yet left an actual puncture mark.

Had Lavi not gone easy on him that one time? After all, Kanda had been careful in telling him - ("You need some estrogen to balance out your fucking hormone levels, you know. No, don't misinterpret that. No, I don't carry estrogen in my dick, Lavi. Wait, what are you doing?") - to mind his own manners. He had even gone out on a limb to set boundaries of the kindest ("I dare you to touch me there again.") kind.

Kanda might be a hard-ass when it comes to protecting his jugular, but you mustn't blame him. He has goals, priorities, _dreams_ possibly? Hell, he wants to fucking _live_, and if keeping his neck away from some redheaded modern day vampire is what it takes, then you better believe he's going to take it.

Presently, he darkens Lavi's doorway with his pent-up accusations.

"If I'm turning into a vampire, the state is going to hear about it, believe you me."

Lavi makes a face, forehead wrinkling. "Errr. Come on in?"

Kanda stomps in, pacing.

Lavi watches him. "Errr. Lemme guess. Something is very wrong?"

Kanda sneers, but keeps pacing, burning a nice dent into the floor. He turns for a moment to study a collage of Lavi's cat on the wall, sneers some more, and returns to pacing. Meanwhile, the funeral march goes through his head.

"Those were taken recently. Yuu-chan is gettin' chub-chubs. I like him that way. All squishy, not a care in the world. I reckon he's takin' after moi, which is a relief, 'cause I have no clue what I'd tell him about his namesake."

Kanda gives him the finger, with both fingers, and continues pacing. Then, he reaches a conclusion and stops. "I have one thing to say to you."

"Oh fuck if you're gonna break my heart again. Lemme _change_ first."

"Fuck off." Kanda bares his neck, stretching his hair back. "See that?"

"Nnn – yes?"

"Look closer."

"Y-yes, I see it." Lavi clears his throat.

"Did you bite me, you bleeding sod."

Lavi seems to get off on this. "Well, I don't mean to keep correctin' your mythology, but a modern day vampire would not bleed. At least sufficiently. Haven't you read Twilight?"

*

Kanda cannot believe Lavi just said that. Absolutely. Not.

*

"Yuu! Yuu! Come back! I didn't mean it! Of course I've never read that series! Ha ha, ha ha, why would I ever indulge in a wet-dream some lady - Yuuuuuuuu!"

*

That night, Kanda hardly sleeps. As per usual. Yet.

He's supposed to be taking his final A-level exam tomorrow.

Someone's going to pay for this.

Just not Kanda.

*

The next day, after leaving the office, hiding in the library, then remembering that Lavi adores the library, and drinking tea behind the school, he summons enough courage that could support a Greek column and addresses the school directory, which gives him the address of Tyki Mikk.

Now, regularly, Kanda would have left Mikk off his list of people to call on, to interrogate about this vampire thing. However, Mikk made it to the top of the list, and Kanda was jiggling his car keys with curiosity. He needed to know the truth.

And true, Kanda's been near his address before. It's just. Kanda had also put it out of his mind.

He thinks this is the wrong season for researching vampire crap. It's almost summer, for fuck's sake. Something's got to give.

*

He knocks. And turns away, wondering if anybody saw.

Or heard his terse yet _not_ frightened knock.

"_Olá_?"

Kanda flips up his jacket collar, running his hand over his face to see if his hair is properly hiding it.

"Oh, Kanda Yuu, _bom dia_. How is this for meeting again?"

"All right, beat the archaic shit." He remembers what Lavi once taught Walker. "_Eu nao falo Português_. Got it?"

"Ah, _que_. . ._pena_." The dirty pause only heightens the sensation of walking into a trap. Mikk acts like he has every right idea of what to do with a foulmouthed teenager. "What's the matter? You have that bitten kitten look."

Kanda blushes, blanches, and almost hops over all those stairs. _I._ (That sick _bastard_.) "I have a question."

"Oh?"

"About what you said last week."

Mikk smiles dollishly. Maybe _this_ person (if that is the correct term for him) will pay for Kanda's unfortunate experience?

"Yes, the meeting in the lounge."

"And corridor."

"Yes, you are a busy bitten kitten, aren't you?" he says, eyes glowing with a raw knowing.

Um. Kanda makes to turn away for good.

"Hold those slender feet of yours, Kanda. Do not be afraid, do come in."

Kanda crunches his beads in his hand. He wants to go now. "Right. Coming in."

"That is quaint. Are you of mixed heritage?"

Kanda ignores him; it's the code of conduct when consorting with potential thieves of the night. He enters the flat, slipping off his loafers and watching too closely as Mikk deposits them into a closet. The closet has an inverted crucifixion nailed to it. Before Kanda can point it out, Mikk simply says, "Ha ha, it fell over?"

Yeah. Like Kanda was born again yesterday.

Alas, Kanda must take his word for it as he watches Mikk upright the cross. Suddenly: "Uncle Tykiiiii – "

This dollish little girl comes streaking into the foyer, the body of the girl lost in all the material of the dress. What kind of material? Kanda couldn't care less.

Unless the person streaking in incidentally runs into him, causing him to let his guard down, and thus, possibly his very soul. The air is knocked out of him, the girl latched tightly on. He can smell smoke, candy, and frosting. He can sense a peculiar incense.

"Tyki darling, who's this?" He can see where she gets her fine attributes.

"Darling niece, how do we treat our guests?"

She smiles evilly and curtsies. Then she licks her lips and dances around her alleged uncle. "Is he staying for supper?" She throws him a brief you-look-good-enough-to-eat-alive look.

Mikk passes a glance over Kanda. He is. _Unbelievable._ "I wouldn't go that far. Darling, did you do this? You ought to know I like my crosses on the inside of the closet, not the outside."

Kanda sweats faster. "This is the niece whom you spoke of the last time we were by?"

"So formal, Kanda!"

Well, one must try to remain civilized.

Mikk pats her on the head. "Yes, this is our Road. Road Kamelot."

"Like the road paved of gold, baby," she asserts, full of piss and vinegar. Add snark to that. There is a small chance Kanda might get along with her. A very spectacularly small chance. That she won't bite, either.

They stand in silence for a minute. "Well!" Mikk says brightly, clapping his hands together, "what brings you to these parts, Kanda? You were going to ask me something? Something quite important, perhaps? Might it be? Has Lavi raised the final question?"

"About my burial plans, _not quite yet_."

Mikk chuckles gaily, along with Road, who also looks as if she's enjoying every bit of the cornered-tiger look on Kanda's face. Soon she skips away, however, skirt bouncing up and down, claiming to have homework that she couldn't bully anybody in her class into doing for her. You can't always win, sometimes the weakest of the flock must be sacrificed, etcetera.

Mikk motions Kanda to sit at his coffee table. "I apologize for her. Wiley ways, she has."

All right. Whatever.

"She has hyperactive tendencies. No matter, the family loves her all the same."

Kanda sucks in his cheek. "Is that all."

Mikk relaxes into the loveseat, legs crossed, relaxed, going nowhere.

Kanda, on the other hand, is ready to bolt. He's so used to the fight, that flight –

Well, all right, it's still an option. Kanda crosses his legs and leans back as well. And further, and further back. Many things run through his mind as he sits there, probably an easy target for this mustached villain.

Mikk forgot to shave.

They sit in silence, Mikk staring with a lazy yet perfunctory glint in his eye, and Kanda with his usual glare. This shouldn't be that painful. They re-cross their legs at the same time, which startles Kanda into asking his question. "Do you believe in vamp – mythical creatures?"

Mikk blinks. Covers his face with his hand. Runs it through his wild mane. "What was that? Have I misheard? Vampires? _Really_." Kanda flares his nostrils. _Motherfu_ - "I've never heard such a. . ."

"Don't - "

"_Erotic_ utterance from you before. My." Mikk nods, licking the corner of his mouth. Kanda's balls nearly take flight into his body. "Why, anyhow, would you ever utter such a thing?"

Revolted silence. "I just thought you might know something about that. Sorry. Goodbye."

"Wait! Kanda, sit down and eat a tea sandwich."

Kanda lifts a piece of bread from a sandwich on the table. He puts it back. "No thank you."

"Do you not enjoy cucumber sandwiches?"

"Not my type."

"And whatever would your type be?" Tyki leans his face into his palm, tilting it as if this is the way to get to Kanda's –

Wait, wait, _wait_.

"Tyki, Tyki! Aren't you gonna do my homework?" Road comes running back, arms stuffed with workbooks and compositions. She's about to drop them at his feet until she notices Kanda again. She gets a look. "Oh, Kanda Yuu. Is your last name Kanda and your first name Yuu? How awfully weird."

Er. "Did I tell you my name?"

"No. I know all about you. Do _you_ wanna do my homework?" She threatens to throw the pile into his lap. He leans forward to block his lap, planting both feet steady on the floor.

"Road, darling, I doubt our guest visited to solve your home economics problems. Isn't that right? Yuu?"

"Don't be silly, Tyki. It's simple home ecology." Blah blah blah.

Kanda bristles. "That reminds me." (Although he's not quite sure why.) "Walker gets cranky whenever you're around. Why." Why, why must Walker cling to Kanda's leg, why?

Mikk snorts and covers his mouth, delighted, while Road literally sparkles, just as delighted and just as lethal. She twirls and throws the pile of books into Kanda's lap anyway. _Oomph_. That _bi_ - "Walker? As in _Allen_ Walker? Oh, Tyki, I haven't seen him for so long." She twirls too close to Kanda. "Allen Walker. How is he?"

"Walker's living." Kanda wonders if that status will change anytime soon.

"Living comfortably? Ah, I bet he's grown."

"Road, you've grown, too," Mikk says charitably, smiling softly. Kanda's gag reflex flounces.

"The last time I saw him, he was at the park with that Bookman boy. I really wanted to land one on that Bookman. He can be so _evil_." She tosses her hair.

Evil. Kanda can believe that.

"What color is his hair now?"

Kanda balks. "Uh. Ugly."

She makes a face, shrugs, and pulls out a lollipop from thin air. She skips away, leaving Kanda alone with her homework. And the Mikk.

They're back to staring each other down again from their opposite ends.

With the smell wafting around, tinged with something Kanda can't even begin to describe, and the fogginess in here, like blown out candles, and with the fucking polishing oil, Kanda almost, almost forgets what he came here for. He coughs. Wonders if they're secretly putting him to sleep.

"Please, have a sandwich. And drink your tea. It's getting cold."

"I have an aversion to most food." Without first seeing the source of it.

"So it's not a rumor." Mikk tilts his head to the other side, hair spilling over his shoulder.

"And you? What's not a rumor about you?"

Mikk raises an eyebrow. "I take it you've heard the one about the nightly outings to the underground club."

Wait. What. N - "No."

"Oh? They say I serve blood in wineglasses, give a discount on eyeshades. Even sell furniture polish to those in need of a shinier resting place."

Kanda moves his foot slightly, deliberately. But, mind, it's just a twitch. He tries not to make it obvious that he's swallowing his (confirmed!) suspicions. "You, uh, idiots at school say this about you?"

Mikk laughs out loud. "I see it's also true that you live under a rock, Kanda. Bless you."

Hell, he _wishes_. He twitches his other foot.

*

On his way out of their creepy resting place, Kanda is avoiding skin contact, and eye contact to boot, opting to slip his shoes on without distraction. He catches sight of a Virgin Mary, richly decorated with indelicate black marker.

"Kanda?"

He grows cold at the sound of his own name. "What."

"Don't you want to know why Walker cowers in my presence?"

Inspiring phrasing is inspiring. Kanda should adopt it.

"Why?" he says, truly curious.

"Once upon a time I played Saint Nicholas at an event on High Street. Walker just so happened to come sit on my lap."

And this is how, from now on, Kanda shall have dirt on Walker.

He leaves, jumping down those stairs, kind of misguided to where he should go next.

*

He ends up at Walker's front door. Who knows why. Except the bite on his neck is still a bite, and it hadn't changed in the hour Kanda had been at Mikk's place.

However, now Kanda can relax.

Cross Marian answers the door.

Fuck it, now Kanda can relax into his crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon position. "Goddamn it."

"Nah ah uh, we mustn't take the Lord in vain."

"You mean, Lord's _name_."

"Ha! We'll see. So, the cat has apparently dragged itself in. What do ya want, Kanda?"

"Where do you get off calling me that?"

"What a shrewd question! Step into my office and I shall give you my most impromptu answer. Beware, I've got a strawberry tart waiting for me."

Kanda sneers, and a lady's voice blossoms out from the open door. "Dear, who's that?"

"_Ave Maria_," he says, like a curse. "Maria, meet Kanda. Kanda. Er, yeah."

Maria looks up at Marian, her cheeks as pale as champagne and lips as scarlet as spilt blood. Blood. She has cleavage a mile deep. "I wish you wouldn't call me that. You know how it leaves me so cold and lifeless." She shivers for effect, pulling gloves on. She smoothes her brow and blinks mindedly at Kanda, stepping a heel out. Kanda blinks back at her.

"Lifeless, you say," Kanda says.

"Don't mind her. She brings the plague upon everyone," Marian says.

Maria huffs to herself, mocking him with her hand to her cleavage. "We shall see who shall say what _later_, tricks-y man. I'm leaving for a nip. Ta-ta." She then murmurs something in what sounds like Spanish? Italian, maybe. Either way, it doesn't sound too good. For Marian's love-life, not good at all.

Well, good.

"Suit yourself," Marian says.

She leaves with her nose turned up, dress swishing around her.

"Uh. Marian."

"Call me Cross, pretty boy."

Kanda puts his hands in his pockets to keep himself from strangling him and says, "No thank you."

"Suit yourself." Which is probably his comeback to every comment in the world, even when it includes women with cleavage that deep.

You can't very well expect Kanda not to look now. That's just insensible nonsense.

Anyway, Marian has been known to race with the devil, on occasion. He may be insufferable, but he's got talent for it, make no mistake.

Kanda steps inside, automatically turned off by the scientific experiments and said scientific experiments being contained within jars on various surfaces. Jars of bodies.

"That's a fetus, Marian," Kanda says, somewhat blindsided.

"Ack, formal ingrates these days!"

Kanda would bring up Mikk's comment, but he just can't seem to, bombarded by these preserved human parasites. Ag.

Marian sighs, waving him into the main room. "Yes, yes, Kandacat, that's a fetus. Those, though, those are animal parts. This one here was once inside my Maria. Don't give me that look. It was a useless organ. She was already cold to the gills with it."

And lifeless. "Walker lives here?"

"Practically infests it. Though I wouldn't include that head of his, always off in the clouds, dithering on about that piece of Lenalee."

"What."

"_Preciousness _of Lenalee. Speaking of," Marian drawls, adjusting his glasses, "how has she been coming along lately?" He rubs his beard.

_What the fuck do you mean by that you piece of_ - "Uh, she's _getting_ along fine."

"That's my girl!"

"Cross? Who are you talking. . .?"

"Allen! Kandacat has come to align the stars with his surliest wit. Finally, a magician who can outdo my greatest work."

Ignoring his excrement of speech, Walker and Kanda come face to face once again, terrorized by one another. Sadly, Kanda can only vouch for himself.

"Kan - _da_," Kanda enunciates for them, Marian especially.

Walker brightens suddenly. "Oh, _Kandacat_. It suits you nicely."

"What."

"Isn't that my line? Why are you here?"

"I did not come to speak to _you_." Kanda immediately regrets the whine in his voice.

"Oh. I thought you would help me revise my hair."

"You'd have a better chance at clown college."

Walker fingers his hair, barely paying attention to the necessary quip, yes. Marian, taking advantage of the idiot's attention deficit disorder, demands that Walker pour him a drink. The idiot with the ugly yellow hair sighs, and to Kanda's (stunned) silence, essentially objects, escaping to his room (lavatory?) with the leftovers in the wine bottle, loudly wondering if it'll help. Whatever that means.

Marian takes pity on himself. "He used to listen to me. I'm not sure what happened."

"You dropped him on his head, I heard."

"Why, yes, of course! That I did. Unfortunately, I had expected it to have the opposite effect. . ."

Kanda starts to severely wonder about this household. Not that he cares. He also wonders about the wine. Not that he cares for wine, either.

And then something just pops out. "Are you a natural redhead?"

"Born and raised. Why? Don't think I'm cutting my locks off for charity."

"_Nooo_. No chance. We could never ask you to commit a deed so _selfless_," Walker says. Kanda watches him trot into the kitchen, head wrapped in a soaked rag of some sort, like a turban. Then Walker trots back out, Huge Mountain Sandwich bulging from between his palms. Marian and Kanda both watch him return this time to his bedroom. They both hear the fine tuning of a brat's door slamming. Kanda catches something else before it closes.

Lily Allen.

That's a lot of hate music. No wonder Walker's on fire this afternoon.

"I hope he didn't use all of it. That's my favorite wine," Marian says glumly, a false reproduction of what Kanda would consider a type of I-am-starving-in-Africa glum.

What. "But you drink indiscriminately."

"Common misconception, Kandacat!"

_Hiss_ - Er. _Tch_. "Oh really."

Marian sips from his sifter, and then clacks it upon the counter in the kitchen, where they have moved to get more. . .uncomfortable. Kanda sits on a bar-like stool.

Marian continues. "For example, I don't do _rocks_."

"Rocks." Kanda finds out that the stool can swivel. Swiveeeel - Er. Right. Fuck it.

"Nevertheless," Marian announces a little too loudly, "I do enjoy choosing from a variety of options. Like my women. There's this number in China who – "

"Right. The reason for my being here is that. I."

"Mhmm?" Marian stirs his drink with his finger.

Kanda feels betrayed by his own tongue. So he relents to the most obvious question of them all, taking a detour. "Are you in any way related to Lavi Bookman?"

"Ah! Yes! Jungle Bookboy!"

"Say what."

"Jun-gle. Book. Boy." All right. Kanda can speak English. He's not deaf. Much. "Cross' self-proclaimed apprentice." Kanda swivels around, realizing that it hadn't come from Marian after all. They both stare at Walker. "But really, Cross claimed him for himself. I suppose that would mean Lavi is Cross' real appointed apprentice? I dunno. I could never understand his pastimes."

Marian snorts. "If he'd only stop dodging my calls."

"_And_ instant messages. He has told me to tell you to stop." Walker puts his hands on his hips. "You frighten him."

"Isn't that ironic," Kanda says in an undertone.

Walker smirks. "Well, _you're_ afraid of _Tyyyki_."

"What the hell, Walker, you can't deal when it comes to being in the same room with that creeper, you punk-ass hypocrite."

"Hey now, that creeper is the best drinking mate I've ever had the fortune to - drink." Marian burps, emptying his sifter. He goes to the cabinet to prepare another drink. With an umbrella possibly left over from New Year's.

Kanda pulls Walker aside. "Your guardian is a blowhard."

"That's refreshing! It's nice to be reminded once in a while."

"Shut it, you twa – _it_," Kanda corrects himself, hoping that Walker won't cotton on. Because he knows if Walker ever told Lenalee, Kanda would never hear the end of it. She owns in the High Kick Olympics, as it is.

"Hmph. What do you want? I have company soon."

Walker has company? Kanda thinks it must be a foul-mouthed bloodsucker. They're the only kind who would even stoop to openly spending time with the brat, and only to get their bloody fix.

Ahem. "Nothing with you, like I said." Pause. He realizes that Walker is looking a bit ridiculous again. "Oy, what did you do to your hair?"

"Well, I've tried staining it. . ."

"With red _wine_."

"Yes I know the difference between red and white." Walker sighs as if he's heard it all before.

"With _red_ wine," Kanda repeats.

"Hullo? You do what you do best, I do what I do best."

"Which is?" To become the next Martha fucking Stewart, or whatever America calls her nowadays.

Walker has wandered off toward the Victorian art on the wall. He picks at some of the torn canvas, rubbing at it with the rag where it's gone dull. "I just might have the skills for this. _Cosmetology_, I think."

"You shouldn't even know that word," Kanda says, squashing his comment on revision and how revision does not apply to _hair_, and that, hell, it's hardly an improvement. Not like -

Well, this is great. Kanda's been sucked into Walker's vortex of epic shame at last.

Walker throws his head back. "Oh, I know _words_."

Marian decides to pry himself away from the liquor cabinet. "I guess _you_ will have to carry on my work, idiot apprentice."

Walker chucks the stained rag at Marian and runs to his room, slamming the door again. But he opens it, saying, "Tell me when he gets here!" _Slam _slam.

Marian stirs his drink with that dumb umbrella straw and holds up three fingers. He kicks the rag away.

Kanda frowns, numb from being in close proximity of them for so long. "As I was saying." But he doesn't say because Marian winks at him.

Three fingers become two. Two fingers, one. One finger, none. And at zero, they hear a sudden scream, a crash, and the door opening, with Walker running into the lavatory across the hall, and then to the elaborate hallway mirror. Marian gives a subdued cheer with his drink. "_Mazel tov_, idiot apprentice. You've achieved the consistency of cotton candy."

"It's pink," Kanda points out.

Walker whines. Grabs at his hair and touches the mirror with his nose. And yet, after short consideration, he says that he could possibly make the look work. He returns to his room like nothing happened.

It is safe to say that Kanda has totally forgotten why he came here. He deadpans at Marian. No comment.

Marian grins. "So what, again, may I ask brings you to this extraordinary establishment?" He looks around, saying something about a camera.

Ah, Kanda can recall now. Vampires? No, he can't say that. He suddenly wonders if Marian can read his thoughts. Er. Uh. Then he wonders if a foil cap would do. Ah fuck iiiit. "For the sake of research – " he begins, but the door buzzer scares the shit out of him.

"I got it I got it!" Walker slides across the floor into the foyer, tripping onto his butt for a moment before giggling about it. He looks through the stained glass. "Uncle!" Anyone would notice him do his skip from leagues away. From time warps away. From just a few unfortunate, sacrificial meters away.

Anyway.

"Who the hell is Uncle?" Kanda asks Marian. He resigns to the fruitlessness of his quest.

Marian laughs rather darkly. "You'll see."

Uncle comes in, dressed to kill in an old fashioned turncoat. It does not bode well.

"Your hair!" Uncle says.

"It's pink!" Walker says.

"Good God," Kanda says.

"You see?" Marian says.

Uncle holds his arms out and Walker more than willingly pounces into them. They can still hear Lily Allen cursing from his bedroom. It is now that Kanda realizes that that's the song he's had in his head for a week now. And it is now that he gets that splendid headache.

Kanda presses his lips together in a final turnout. "Do you, or do you not, know anything about idiots with fangs?"

Uncle, Walker, and Marian turn toward him, and Kanda can't help the flush of blood to his face. Great. Showing off all his healthy capillaries. Now they'll know exactly where to bite. Marian winks, wrapping the rosary from around his neck to around his finger, reflecting scarlet hues.

The Uncle looks a bit suspicious, sort of like the person in that Victorian portrait. . .

*

Moving on with his quest (and figuring that he's not about to get much out of Marian and his gang of delinquents), Kanda visits Komui and Lenalee in their quasi-lab-office-pigsty flat. Komui is the one to answer the door, dressed in a white smock and smelling of petrol oil. Cooking grease. Oh, and a special kind of wood.

Maybe this is not a good time. "May I come in?" Kanda tries, for he's beginning to feel a little. . .uninvited. It's a strange thing. He's used to either being invited - or not being invited. There was never a middle ground to consider.

Komui hesitates, sizing him up. "I don't know. Can you?" Kanda hesitates, hair rising off his neck. "Are you going behind my back and leaping through fields of lus – wicked _love_ with my dearest Lenalee?" Komui eyes him like an escaped convict for effect.

What's biting his ass?

"Uh. Hell no?"

"Good answer!" Komui applauds, pulling Kanda by the lapel into the flat. "Hold the helium," he pauses, "what do you mean Lenalee's not good enough for you?!"

"Let it go, Komui," Kanda warns. He wonders if it would absolutely kill Komui to know Walker is leading Lenalee astray behind his back. You know, off in meadows full of hay fever and stuff. Mad Cow Disease. That might explain a few things.

He goes to see if the plant he had given Lenalee is flourishing properly. As is predictable, and still an unpleasant surprise, he finds a mutation in its place.

"Ko_mui_!"

"Oh, that s-slight mishap? I had to make a few modifications. The stem's structure was just all wrong. And the flower, it was too glorious for the stem." This and that, I'm a downright insensitive idiot, I've done wrong, you may castrate me now, I love your gift of pain, I live for it really, and so forth.

They stare at the mutation, Kanda in blatant horror and Komui in abstract fondness. This is where the twain shall never meet. This is when Kanda should possibly make a few modifications on Komui. This is his chance.

"And what do you call this," Kanda grits through his teeth, tempted to let Lenalee's secret out.

"Do you want my Latinized version or the everyday I-am-not-a-PhD version?"

"Take an educated PhD guess."

"Her name is Komurin the 22nd."

"Her name? Are you now naming all your. . ._abominations_, after you?"

"Well, seeing as how you sufficiently beheaded my last one."

"Komui. It was a plant capable of inhuman speech (read: alien vocal chords) that I could hear all the way from my kitchen."

And this is why Kanda is now deaf and Komui is moving on to the next best thing.

Kanda gives up on willing the plant back to its _normal_, original state, and focuses on the glass of the office door where he assumes Komui has scribbled the illegible notes and equations and a shopping list with washable marker. He snorts, and right when he's about to officially give up his quest and go home, Komui says, "Besides, you can't blame me for Komurin the 22nd. Lenalee had told me to have my fun with it."

_Your way, you mean_ –

What. T-tch! "Komui, there is something you should know."

Bam! "Don't tell him don't tell him don't tell hiiimmm!" Lenalee arrives like a gust of jasmine flowers, exactly what Komurin the 22nd used to be. Her hair, newly cut and asking for a very loud rebuttal from her dearest brother, wisps around her face, causing Kanda to endure some questionable flashbacks.

He stares at her as she regains her breath.

"Which _is_," he continues in spite, giving her enough wiggle room to edge in a few words. You see? Kanda is not all mean. He means well, actually. Too well. Maybe Komui even deserves to know what his baby sister has been up to with her premature wedding plans.

She rushes forward and throws her purse made of fucking bricks into Kanda's face, thus upgrading his headache to a migraine. The lights now seem so much brighter. He squints, checking his mouth.

"Tell me what," Komui finally says, folding his arms in that me-brother-you-baby-sister-forever sort of way. It's highly unnecessary. And very modern-Neanderthal.

It's when Komui's eyes flash coldly that Lenalee decides to explain why she's throwing fucking bricks at Kanda's face. "Um, tell you that. . .I received a high mark on my recent science essay? I've heard there is a national competition, in fact." She smiles nice and wide for the hidden camera. She lets him see the bullshit tear in her eye. Kanda rolls his eyes. Komui's eyes explode with what might be gratitude, or unrestrained insanity. He does a dance and starts going on about teenage geniuses, how they all tend to take after him, blah blah blowhard blah.

Lenalee takes (chases) Kanda into her room, into her wardrobe, and snaps the doors shut. Darkness. "Thank heavens I saw you walking here, you big mouth. My brother doesn't know about us!"

Kanda breaks into a sweat. "You and Walker."

"Yes me and - ! Me and Allen," she whispers.

It's quite cramped in here. Kanda again checks to see if she had broken his teeth. And if he's grown a few new ones. "Don't sweat it," he says with renewed vigor. "I only told him you're engaged. Not to whom."

In the dark, he can hear her heart flat-lining. An even darker part of him laughs. "Lenalee, I'm flattered that you would think so lowly of me. It's an honor. So goodnight."

She clings to his neck. "Don't leave meee!"

"What now."

"He hasn't noticed my hair yet." Whine wail whine.

"So." He makes to open the doors.

"So," she makes to keep them shut, "brave his notice with me!"

"God you sound like Walker. You now have an idiot boyfriend with pink hair, by the way."

"Oh? I wonder why he neglected to call me. He always does after a – "

"Failure?"

"_Attempt_."

"Too bad. He's out with some man named _Uncle_."

"Uncle? That's not his real name."

"What is it then?" Not that Kanda is that curious. He tries not to let her perfume affect him. He sneezes instead.

Lenalee stops shifting against the hangers. "You know? I have no idea."

Never! "All right. Goodnight." He makes to open the doors, and again, she blocks him.

"Wait!"

"Woman. Will you _stop_ choking me?"

She gasps. "That's right, your neck, I'd forgotten. Is it still bitten? Bruised? Whatever?"

"Don't remind me."

He can feel her rubbing his neck blindly in the dark.

Can anybody feel that kitty-in-distress feeling that Kanda is feeling. . .? Yeah. He is giving in. "It's somewhat sore. Somewhat."

She rubs a little to the left.

"A little to the back," Kanda says primly, indicating where with his finger.

She gets in the position where, if you knew anything about her, you would know she is giving him a legitimate massage. He sighs happily for the first time today. "Lenalee. Does your brother know anything about damned vampires."

"Hmm."

"Hmm, as in he does or he does not?"

"Hmm, as in _damned_ _vampires_ would be a redundancy. Vampires are said to already be damned, correct?"

Kanda makes a sour face, of which she can't see anyway. "Fucking vampires, then."

_Just please don't bring up your big id – ahh, right there._

She sighs. "Now it just sounds as if you're fu – " The wardrobe opens to an expanse of brightness and tunnels out into a lone black figure standing before them. Lenalee screams, Kanda is downright murdered by her incessant clinging, and the figure wards them off with a cape.

What. A cape?

"Who the hell are you!" Kanda wheezes, prying Lenalee's arm from beneath his chin.

"Lenalee Lee? Is it you in there with that young man? Your brother said you had gone off in here."

"Crowley, it's you!" she chokes out, shoving Kanda out of the way.

"'Tis me!"

"I thought you weren't coming till next week?" She holds out her hand and he bows to kiss it.

Kanda untangles himself from a fallen dress and goes to stand in the corner of the room, bent hanger in hand for just in case the cape comes flying at him or something.

"Kanda, this is my brother's correspondent from Romania."

"Hallo, I am Aleister Crowley the Third. Pleased to be meeting you at last."

Likewise. Now don't move so Kanda can pin you to the wall.

Wait. _At last?_ Is this some vampire expression? Is it a threat?!

That's it! _Hold real still_.

Lenalee grins between them. "I've been telling Crowley all about you. He loves to hear of our little misadventures." Her smile is strained at the mention of it. Crowley's smile is the exact opposite, teeth bared, pointed, and bleached white. If there was any, _any_ sort of indication of which mythical creature he could ever be. . .

The white on black hair, though, is a bit much.

*

This is around the time Komui suddenly screams and drops dead from Lenalee's lack of lustrous locks. Turns out she had donated her hair. Komui should be so thrilled to have a sister so unlike Cross Marian.

*

Lenalee serves them weak tea although Kanda is in more of a strong-tea-hits-the-spot sort of mood. He stares into the steam as it rises into his face and up his nose. His migraine teeters on the totter of disaster. Disaster, furthermore, that could hardly afford a shove in the right direction.

"Where did you say you're from?" he asks the creature in the cape.

Crowley picks at his collar. "Romania," he says, tongue poking against a sharp tooth.

That can't be normal.

"Where in Romania?" Not _Transylvania_, perhaps?

"A place not like this one."

"Is it a prison with steel-enforced bars?"

"Prison?" Crowley looks at Komui for help.

"Kanda's wit is highly prized in these parts," Komui says, smiling, carefully pinching at Kanda's knee from under the table. They pummel each other with electric signals.

Crowley seems to be comforted. He thinks for a moment. "It is made of stone?"

Kanda leans on his hands, feeling naked without that bent hanger. "That is, with my highly prized wit, what I would call a castle."

"Casserole?"

"No, _castle_. Do you do anything. . .productive in your castle?"

"I live there."

"Do you live alone?"

"I have a wife."

_There_ it is.

"Is she the one who shines your coffin for you - ?"

"All riiiight there, Kanda, I must go scrub my vials. Messy experiments and all, splitter-splatter all over the walls! Ahem. Lenalee?" Komui says sweetly.

Lenalee smiles tightly at him. "Wash your own vials, lazy brother."

"Awww but you do such a lovely jooob, with your _caring_ touch! You make them as clear as the purest battery acid!" Komui pauses. "What's your secret?"

Lenalee looks at Kanda, Kanda looks at Komui. Well, an invitation is still an invitation. . . "There is something you should know, Komui," Kanda says.

Lenalee's teaspoon whips toward his face. He dodges it with his ninja reflexes.

Or _vampiric_?

Fuck it. Kanda stands up and points an accusatory finger at Crowley. "No disrespect, but what is up with your teeth."

Crowley looks between Komui and Lenalee and then hangs his head. "I work so hard to hide my disease."

Ah hah! The accused confesses!

"I hoped you would not see it," Crowley continues.

Kanda's arm drops slowly. Lenalee takes her fallen teaspoon and thwacks him upside the head with it. He ignores the lump growing in the spot she hit. "You're hopeless!" she whispers.

"Er, Kanda, are you accusing Crowley of. . .something we will not mention here and now?" Komui laughs nervously, reaching to pat Crowley on the back. Crowley lifts his head, scowling at Kanda, not totally a vampire, but giving the impression of an embittered man.

And Kanda kind of comes to his senses as if they had left him for a very long time.

He decides to leave the house with whatever dignity he has yet to save, shaking Crowley's hand with a mumbled apology and escaping out the door with the intention of never returning.

What could he ever salvage? Forget it, he's made a complete idiot of himself.

"Wait!"

"What now," he says, rubbing at his neck.

Lenalee rushes up to him on the stoop and whispers, "About your problem."

"Hardly a problem."

"Kanda, after that outburst, I would consider it to be a dilemma. Thank God I'm not that generous."

He scowls. She's pushing it. She's also right.

"About your problem, you should probably check with Lavi again."

"Why?"

She folds her arms. "You spend enough time at his place to know that he's not the only one living there."

Kanda can taste vomit. "Not _Bookman_."

Lenalee laughs out loud, tears in her eyes. "No!" She keeps laughing, possibly reaching the point of climax. Erg.

"Ffff I'm sorry, I can't think of any. . .body. . .else. _Goddamn it_."

She nods, sympathetically patting his shoulder. But she keeps laughing as if in afterglow.

It's the lack of sleep, he knows it. It's his circle of superstitious friends. It's something that Lavi might have slipped into his water while fixing some chamomile sleep aid.

And yet, Kanda still knows that he's the number one idiot.

*

It's the fucking cat.

*

Without calling ahead, Kanda directs himself straight to Lavi's, breathing curses the whole time. At one point a young woman, dressed for clubbing, calls out to him to breathe a little more, and Kanda merely stops, stares, and says, "I'll breathe when you start to look better in that dress."

Oh yes, Kanda's the one on fire now. Burn, fucker, burn.

Despite the dissolution of his quest, he wonders if a modern vampire would really burn in broad daylight. If, perhaps, he should take Lavi tanning sometime.

Or take Lavi's fucking feline.

"Oy! Open up, you harbinger of feline fatales!" Kanda knocks very nicely. Bang bang bang! "Lavi, open up or I'll kill him without a trial!" He keeps banging on the door until Lavi opens it, his eyes sagging with sleep. It's that offending I-can't-bear-to-part-from-my-Don-Quixote-sized-novel look.

"Kill _who_?" he says. In other words, _I've been reading smutty smut smut!_

"That Damned Cat! And if you say it's a redundancy because cats are already damned – " Kanda pauses, catching his breath. "Then I'd believe you. What's that on your face?"

Lavi wipes his cheek. The stain stays. "Oh? Pro'ly blood."

Kanda sucks in his breath. Shut the fuck up, he's had a trying day.

He steps back.

"Aw, Yuu, you're still on that vampire kick?" They stare at each other. Lavi chews on his piercing and Kanda watches against his better judgment. How many times must Kanda show him pamphlets of various infections to get him to quit that habit? "My lip was bleeding? I must'a wiped it. It wouldn't be the firs' time."

Sounds about right. Kanda gets over himself and barges in, fighting this sudden urge to just. Do _something_. True, he's had the urge before, and true, he may or may not have resisted it. Who knows? Except that Kanda will carry it with him to the grave.

He searches for the cat, spilling Japanese expletives, willpower spilling out along with them.

Lavi follows him around. "Uh, Yuu-chan is havin' his nap times desu."

Cute, Lavi, bloody cute.

Anyway, if Kanda were a cat, where would he hide? Kanda checks under Lavi's bed. Then he kindly tears Lavi's room apart.

"Ya know, he's not in here," Lavi points out.

Kanda huffs and starts on Bookman's near-empty room. Papers are scattered every which way, multiple burnt out laptops stacked, foreign medical equipment cleaned and placed under a sheet on Bookman's bed.

"Er, Yuu? The door was closed," Lavi points out.

"What's your point?" Kanda tests the sharpness of a blade against his fingertip.

Lavi leans against the doorway. "Well, if you're suggestin' Yuu-chan can open and close doors whenever he sure pleases. . . Where ya goin' nooow?"

"Closet." Because Kanda just got an idea.

He opens the hall closet to find the cat chewing on Lavi's black pleather pants (the ones Kanda had forbidden him to wear anywhere near him). He steps back, tilts his head, and watches in approval. The he shuts the door.

"Errr. Yuu-chan's been teething. Funny how long that phase lasts."

Kanda smiles and sees that Lavi hasn't fully removed the blood from his cheek. He invades Lavi's bubble. "I'll deal with the little bloodsucker later."

"H-how much later?"

"Depends on how long this will take."

Kanda grabs Lavi, maybe as hard as he can, he's not sure. But he grabs him and _licks_; he's fucking licking the dried blood away. Who cares about vampirism. As far as Kanda is concerned, he's doing a damned good job just being (truly) himself, dragging his tongue down into Lavi's open mouth. It only takes a tongue to make this quest worthwhile.

Blood is a mix of iron and wine.

Lavi shoves Kanda into the closet door, where they can hear Yuu-chan gnawing and scratching through the wood.

"_Hewantsout_," Lavi mumbles into the kiss.

"He can open doors, he'll figure it out." _We're smart like that_.

Kanda steals Lavi's breath, and flesh, biting down on Lavi's neck, and realizing in the end, like a fresh puncture wound into his very core, that he derives many perverse pleasures from simply being this close.

It could consume him.

"_Ya know_, when I'd caught him gnawing on your neck before, I had been so sure that it would've woken you up," Lavi says. "Funny how you both seem to sleep like the dead."


End file.
